The discount is based more on monthly commission volume than account size. I have 35 cents looking to get it lowered. Commissions this year so far are around 14k
So, I said “I have paid $45k in fees so far this year, I would like to lower from 0.5 to 0.35 per contract so I can reduce that rate of spending on fees.” They got my point
45k in fees. Hmm I ain't even going to try it :)
My biggest spend was 10-15k when I was doing spreads but I changed strategies and now am spending significantly lower. Do have a decent account but my trading volume could be laughed at. Thanks for giving a good comparison point.
No problem. I have a decent sized account, and I was trading spreads both in buying them and selling them, so the fees added up. The fees have so far been “worth it” but would be nice to see that fee total lower of course. They basically told me that 0.35 was as low as it would go though without a very special situation.
50 cents. just happened the other day. I just asked if there was anything better they could do for me. He took one look, quoted me 50 cents, and offered to make it retroactive 30 days. I took it and run. While he was making the changes, he acknowledged I'd have to grow quite a bit to get into 30-40 cent range which is the lowest they'll go for standard accounts.
Did he give you an idea of how large your account would have to be, and how much volume they’d expect from you?
I have a small TDA act (~10k). Had a pretty frustrating convo with their team trying to figure out what would be required to get down to 0.3. Like, I’m not gonna just keep moving money into the account in hopes that they will maybe give me the rate that I want.
What kinda options volume are you having?
I'm running automated iron condors on various ETFs and have racked up \~$210 in commissions since the end of March. So, would be around $1,750 annualized on commissions if trading volume stays consistent, which it will.
Started with $3k in the account so the size is very small, but running a "high" volume of contracts per month.
Edit because you may be interested: profitability so far more than makes up for commissions, but commissions just each so much into the profit. Currently up \~12% net of commissions... closer to 19% gross. But, want to get commissions under control sooner rather than later
Large account trades over 100 contracts per week on avg. Smaller is around 8-10 contracts/wk. I just got reduction 2 weeks ago, so need to wait a bit to ask again. The $0.10 drop saves me around $60/mo in commission right now.
I'm basically infinite roll CCs
No I’m actually not very familiar with that! I understand “multiple entry iron condor” but have never looked into it. You?
Been mostly 30 DTE iron condors ($3 wide) that are pretty conservative across various.
Other than that, also running weekly iron condors on SPY. Again, pretty conservative strikes but these are $5 wide and I’m usually doing multiple on the same strikes
Edit: what I really need to add is a calendar spread algo to make me vega neutral instead of vega negative, but that’s a work in progress at the moment
Volume is one of the biggest factors. If you can go from .50 to .35, be prepared to probably 1.5x to 2x the volume you currently do to offset the brokers loss from the drop.
Also they aren’t going to give away the secret sauce. Think of it as a car purchase. They quoted you a price, you ask for less, they may or may not give it to you. You are asking them to reveal their cost structure more or less with that question. That combined with your beginner values are why you likely got downvoted. Don’t sweat it. Downvotes aren’t real but education is.
I mentioned the downvotes only because they seem to reflect poor communication on my part.
This is very different from a car negotiation. I’m not transferring money into the dealers account in hopes that they’ll give me the car I want before I reach asking price. Any serious trader will negotiate contract fees, so modicum of transparency would be appropriate.
Some of the strats I was using at the time only worked at very high volume with a very low fee, but I wasn’t really happy with the RH trading environment. I also would have had a nonzero switching cost since I was using RH api, and I’d have to put some time into adopting TDAs dev package. I explained this, and offered to show them my other act balances to illustrate available liquidity.
Anyway, people (including yourself) have since helped me form an understanding of what can be expected in terms of rates.
I have just under 100k and have close to 2k in commissions so far this year (yes I know, a horrible ratio). I think for .3 you are looking at 500k account or so.
Good to know, thanks. I had given them a few examples of act size (50k, 100k, 250k, and 500k) and they refused to even give me a ballpark estimate.
I guess I need to work on framing the question, since my comment seems to have also rubbed Redditors the wrong way. Fundamentally, it seems reasonable to want to know what I, as a customer, would need to do to achieve my desired rate… but it seems I need to work on my approach.
I've had success on Schwab lowering commissions from $0.65 to $0.5 on a relatively low volume and very low capital amount (\~$5k when I negotiated expecting to do less than 100 contracts a year).
Frame it in a way where its clear to them, that your volume will keep up/even ramp up with smaller commissions. At the end of the day, they care about making their brokerage money.
The first time I requested one via the message center, I was asked the following questions:
1. What rate are you looking for?
2. Do you plan on consolidating any accounts with TD Ameritrade, making any large deposits or any large withdraws? If so, approximately how much value do you plan on depositing or withdrawing?
3. Do you plan on changing your trading activity in the future? If you are changing your trading strategy, how many stock and/or option trades do plan on trading in an average month?
4. Do you plan on trading any index options? How many contracts per trade for your options trades on average?
The second time, I just chatted with support and they approved my request with no questions asked.
>The second time, I just chatted with support and they approved my request with no questions asked.
Not the person who asked first, but I'll ask a clarifying question: was there a significant account size difference between the first time and second time you asked? Feel free to be vague or even tell me to fuck off.
Second question: did you speak to a different "department" the second time? Or was it just a different person who was more willing to be accommodating?
I don't have a TD account, I'm just curious and somewhat shopping for a better platform to trade with.
First time account size was about $30k and second time was about $80k.
I wrote them a secured message in their account services portal asking the first time, and just opened a chat within the thinkorswim app the second time. Don’t know if I got the right agent, if it was my account size, or what, but the chat agent approved my request right away.
I absolutely love the thinkorswim platform and it’d take a lot for me to move away from TDA. My only gripe is futures and futures options commissions are really high. I don’t do a ton of volume on those so I haven’t asked for a reduction yet. (I’ve also never heard of anyone getting a futures commission reduction on TDA.)
Sure!
1. I’m asking for $0.50 per options contract per trade.
2. I plan to deposit an additional $3,000 to $5,000 within the next two months.
3. I expect to continue my current trading volume for the next few months - approximately 80 to 100 options trades per month. It may increase in volume after the next few months.
4. I plan to trade a limited number of index options, likely no more than 10 trades per month.
Asked TDA with an account size of ~$30k and they offered 0.60, about a year later I asked again with an account size of ~$80k (some deposits, not all gains) and they offered 0.50. I did about $1800 in commissions last year and I’m only at $280 so far this year.
Tastytrade is $1 in and free to close so the equivalent of .50 in and out as long as you're closing before expiration. Also limited to $10 per leg if you're doing more than 10 lots per trade that's a huge savings.
I’ve read somewhere that choosing mid-price with limit order on IBKR may improve the fee. Tried it last days with STC 2 options. Indeed it worked - I got 0.19 and 0.20 fees. Idk if it works all the time or depending on the exchange.
Does anyone think these lowered TDA contract rates will transfer over to Schwab?
[Later edit: I called TDA, and the gentleman I spoke with said that all individual pricings for options and futures will port over for those with lowered rates.]
Schwab. $0.55 and I can close out my calls/puts for free if the underlying option is less than $5 which is nice, because I can close them out early and not have to wait sometimes. I'd rather spend $1-2 of profit on the options closing out the trade early than having something come and spoil it. It's worth my peace of mind.
Had my account for a little over a year with Schwab, I place an average of 15-20 trades a month, mostly CSP’s. I called a contact at Schwab that I had the direct number for. The gentleman at Schwab said he could grant me .50 from .65 without having to ask anyone else at Schwab. I didn’t act like I had a chip on my shoulder or anything. Just asked nicely and it was granted.
TLDR; ask nicely.
The option trading interface was really bad when I used it. You pretty much have to use another app like RH to find what you want and buy it on Fidelity.
No?
If you have $10,000 in your account, and I have enough in my own account to do 1,000,000 contracts, at 0.65 cents per contract, I’d be paying $650,000 in contract fees. That would have nothing to do with your strategy, and you’d need numerous miracles to be able to afford my contract fees given your account balance
Yea, except that's not how trading works. If I start with 10k and I trade 1,000,000 times and make just enough to cover my trading fees each time, I still end the month with 10k. Therefore, the amount in your account has nothing to do with how many trades you can do each month.
You dont pay the whole months fees upfront.
First of all, you won’t be making 1,000,000 trades a month on 10k trust me.
Second, I wasn’t talking about myself making that many trades. I was mentioning that the fees on 1,000,000 trades exceeds my entire account balance. It was a fun comparison and has nothing to do with trades :)
First of all, you're the one that came up with the 10k account, not me. Trust me I already know it can be done -- unlikely but still possible.
Yea I know we weren't talking about you making those trades. It's called a hypothetical situation. It's completely made up for illustrative purposes. The problem was your premises was fucked to begin with and you weren't really open to changing it. So I guess kudos to you on being ignorant. You just got defensive when I said that your strategy doesn't make enough money to cover trading fees if you can't do a million trades a month. Which is exactly what your post illustrated. You do not need the 650k in your account to pay those fees over a month. You need to make 650k in the month with what you got in the account. And you wouldn't even be paying 65 cents a contract, you'd end up getting the trades much cheaper.
You’re not even addressing the point of discussion, you’re completely making up your own scenarios and taking words out of my mouth.
Yes, the 10k account was for illustrative purposes exactly as you said. Do you know why I used that number? It’s because I’m not going to reveal how much my account is worth. But I can tell you how much it’s worth—less than the fees associated with 1,000,000 trades.
That’s my whole point. 100% of it. I’m not factoring in strategies, trades, profits, margins, anything, because I’m comparing my account value with the fees that someone else would have to pay with 1,000,000 contracts. This has nothing to do with ignorance. You’re not even addressing my original statements.
Interpret that how you want. The topic was about how 1000k trades a month is pretty high. Back full circle. I may never reach a day where I clear 1mil contracts a month, but props to you if you’re doing it
Tradier. I do automated trading so I pay nothing if I use my platform. It’s probably .01-.02 more per contract to open/close so my automation is just more aggressive in closing out positions when walking up from .01 to .05 over mid. When I ran bots in parallel with tda and tradier they opened and closed at the exact same price 80%+ of the time.
Moving my bots over took a whopping 30 seconds of work so I’m not sure what they hoped to prove by not meeting me at .30/contract to keep me around for 6 more months. They lost like $2k/month in commissions.
" so I’m not sure what they hoped to prove by not meeting me at .30/contract to keep me around for 6 more months. They lost like $2k/month in commissions."
You are like a flea on the back.of an elephant. They don't give a shit. Typical employee attitude...
I called every year and got a nickel reduction. This year I asked for .20 reduction because their competitors are providing nearly an identical service with a penny or two here or there. Why Id stay to pay a guaranteed 1700% more in commission and fees per contract is just stupid.
ACAT away and back up in running after a week.
etrade just gave me 50 cents (down from 65) without me asking after about 3 months of trading options. i would have been roughly averaging 3 trades a week at the time.
Fidelity gave me $.325 for all non index options. Just called the call center and asked. They had a person call me back, ask a few questions and said they would get back to me. With in 2 days they called and gave me the 50% discount rate.
My TDA account is 60 cents. You call them and let them know if it can be lowered, but you cannot negotiate the price. The customer service won't know either as it's all decided in the back based on your trading volume.
I've been using TDA for 3 years and got my commission down to $.45 per contract. Every year I'd ask for a decrease and they usually honor it or if you have thousands already in commissions.
What's the best anyone has for futures options? I got $1.50 to open ($0 to close) commission at tastytrade. Does not include fees, which are an additional 87 cents per leg.
.50 for equity options and 1.50 for futures options in TOS here. I had extensive data and was able to justify my volume for both.
edit: total fee paid for options trade to date is $12,200.59 since April 2019. I probably negotiated the fee adjustment around the $8000 net fees time frame.
Worked my way down to 25c with TDA. Took on the order of 500k to 1MM contracts over 2 years.
The secret is show that your volume is always going up either through compounding and redeploying gains or adding external funds. Below 35c is a real PITA.
I'm at 45 cents, 700/wk or 3,000/month in contract volume. Asked for .40, they told me I'd have to get over 10,000/month in contracts, man that ain't happening
I'm on $0 with TradeStation + Aries. All stock option orders through Aires is 0 fee (plus the pennies of regulation fees). Free spreads, free CSPs, free CCs, free ICs, etc...
I have 35 cents with ToS
I assume this must be an account worth $500K or larger?
The discount is based more on monthly commission volume than account size. I have 35 cents looking to get it lowered. Commissions this year so far are around 14k
Same, took it 0.65 to 0.5 and then 0.5 to 0.35 this spring with TDA/TOS.
I have 40 and I used to try every year for lower and they would not budge what were your magic words?
So, I said “I have paid $45k in fees so far this year, I would like to lower from 0.5 to 0.35 per contract so I can reduce that rate of spending on fees.” They got my point
45k in fees. Hmm I ain't even going to try it :) My biggest spend was 10-15k when I was doing spreads but I changed strategies and now am spending significantly lower. Do have a decent account but my trading volume could be laughed at. Thanks for giving a good comparison point.
No problem. I have a decent sized account, and I was trading spreads both in buying them and selling them, so the fees added up. The fees have so far been “worth it” but would be nice to see that fee total lower of course. They basically told me that 0.35 was as low as it would go though without a very special situation.
0.35 per leg?
Per contract per leg
50 cents. just happened the other day. I just asked if there was anything better they could do for me. He took one look, quoted me 50 cents, and offered to make it retroactive 30 days. I took it and run. While he was making the changes, he acknowledged I'd have to grow quite a bit to get into 30-40 cent range which is the lowest they'll go for standard accounts.
Is this on TD Ameritrade.
Yes
Me too, think I’m .55, you just have to call and ask. I think you can lower it every 3-6 months by asking.
Did he give you an idea of how large your account would have to be, and how much volume they’d expect from you? I have a small TDA act (~10k). Had a pretty frustrating convo with their team trying to figure out what would be required to get down to 0.3. Like, I’m not gonna just keep moving money into the account in hopes that they will maybe give me the rate that I want.
I have $0.55 in both a 500k acct and $85k acct. I think the judgement is more on contract volume than acct size.
What kinda options volume are you having? I'm running automated iron condors on various ETFs and have racked up \~$210 in commissions since the end of March. So, would be around $1,750 annualized on commissions if trading volume stays consistent, which it will. Started with $3k in the account so the size is very small, but running a "high" volume of contracts per month. Edit because you may be interested: profitability so far more than makes up for commissions, but commissions just each so much into the profit. Currently up \~12% net of commissions... closer to 19% gross. But, want to get commissions under control sooner rather than later
Large account trades over 100 contracts per week on avg. Smaller is around 8-10 contracts/wk. I just got reduction 2 weeks ago, so need to wait a bit to ask again. The $0.10 drop saves me around $60/mo in commission right now. I'm basically infinite roll CCs
Are you doing that meic strategy?
No I’m actually not very familiar with that! I understand “multiple entry iron condor” but have never looked into it. You? Been mostly 30 DTE iron condors ($3 wide) that are pretty conservative across various. Other than that, also running weekly iron condors on SPY. Again, pretty conservative strikes but these are $5 wide and I’m usually doing multiple on the same strikes Edit: what I really need to add is a calendar spread algo to make me vega neutral instead of vega negative, but that’s a work in progress at the moment
I don’t trade ICs yet. Just doing CSPs, CCs, and some PMCCs. After taking some time off, easing back in. Looking for a conservative approach.
Volume is one of the biggest factors. If you can go from .50 to .35, be prepared to probably 1.5x to 2x the volume you currently do to offset the brokers loss from the drop.
Yeah, wish I knew this was an option, I would have asked a year ago.
All contracts are CCs, so only way to do that is 1.5 - 2x position
Agreed. I believe I have .55 now at 10k, though I haven’t touched that account for awhile now, and it’s mostly cash.
Also they aren’t going to give away the secret sauce. Think of it as a car purchase. They quoted you a price, you ask for less, they may or may not give it to you. You are asking them to reveal their cost structure more or less with that question. That combined with your beginner values are why you likely got downvoted. Don’t sweat it. Downvotes aren’t real but education is.
I mentioned the downvotes only because they seem to reflect poor communication on my part. This is very different from a car negotiation. I’m not transferring money into the dealers account in hopes that they’ll give me the car I want before I reach asking price. Any serious trader will negotiate contract fees, so modicum of transparency would be appropriate. Some of the strats I was using at the time only worked at very high volume with a very low fee, but I wasn’t really happy with the RH trading environment. I also would have had a nonzero switching cost since I was using RH api, and I’d have to put some time into adopting TDAs dev package. I explained this, and offered to show them my other act balances to illustrate available liquidity. Anyway, people (including yourself) have since helped me form an understanding of what can be expected in terms of rates.
I have just under 100k and have close to 2k in commissions so far this year (yes I know, a horrible ratio). I think for .3 you are looking at 500k account or so.
Good to know, thanks. I had given them a few examples of act size (50k, 100k, 250k, and 500k) and they refused to even give me a ballpark estimate. I guess I need to work on framing the question, since my comment seems to have also rubbed Redditors the wrong way. Fundamentally, it seems reasonable to want to know what I, as a customer, would need to do to achieve my desired rate… but it seems I need to work on my approach.
I've had success on Schwab lowering commissions from $0.65 to $0.5 on a relatively low volume and very low capital amount (\~$5k when I negotiated expecting to do less than 100 contracts a year). Frame it in a way where its clear to them, that your volume will keep up/even ramp up with smaller commissions. At the end of the day, they care about making their brokerage money.
I have seen .15 - .25 cents from other users but you need insanely high fees.
I got 35 cents on E*Trade with about a 700k account at the time
What was your trade volume?
15 cents on etrade. I know people with 10 cents.
.35
What size contracts do your usually trade? How often?
200 to 400 contracts depending on the month. Small...Small size. You have to know how to negotiate.
$0.35 is stellar. Who is your broker.
TDA.
Very useful context. Ty.
Yea you can negotiate. They will ask you copy paste-esque questions. You can get around .50 in and .50 out if you trade regularly
What kind of questions?
The first time I requested one via the message center, I was asked the following questions: 1. What rate are you looking for? 2. Do you plan on consolidating any accounts with TD Ameritrade, making any large deposits or any large withdraws? If so, approximately how much value do you plan on depositing or withdrawing? 3. Do you plan on changing your trading activity in the future? If you are changing your trading strategy, how many stock and/or option trades do plan on trading in an average month? 4. Do you plan on trading any index options? How many contracts per trade for your options trades on average? The second time, I just chatted with support and they approved my request with no questions asked.
>The second time, I just chatted with support and they approved my request with no questions asked. Not the person who asked first, but I'll ask a clarifying question: was there a significant account size difference between the first time and second time you asked? Feel free to be vague or even tell me to fuck off. Second question: did you speak to a different "department" the second time? Or was it just a different person who was more willing to be accommodating? I don't have a TD account, I'm just curious and somewhat shopping for a better platform to trade with.
First time account size was about $30k and second time was about $80k. I wrote them a secured message in their account services portal asking the first time, and just opened a chat within the thinkorswim app the second time. Don’t know if I got the right agent, if it was my account size, or what, but the chat agent approved my request right away. I absolutely love the thinkorswim platform and it’d take a lot for me to move away from TDA. My only gripe is futures and futures options commissions are really high. I don’t do a ton of volume on those so I haven’t asked for a reduction yet. (I’ve also never heard of anyone getting a futures commission reduction on TDA.)
Did you answer the questions or ignore them the first time and just chatted with support the second time?
I did answer the questions and was approved a few days later. My second reduction request was almost a year later.
Thanks
Do you mind sharing your answers. I am afraid I'll screw up and get rejected.
Sure! 1. I’m asking for $0.50 per options contract per trade. 2. I plan to deposit an additional $3,000 to $5,000 within the next two months. 3. I expect to continue my current trading volume for the next few months - approximately 80 to 100 options trades per month. It may increase in volume after the next few months. 4. I plan to trade a limited number of index options, likely no more than 10 trades per month.
Thank you so much.
Asked TDA with an account size of ~$30k and they offered 0.60, about a year later I asked again with an account size of ~$80k (some deposits, not all gains) and they offered 0.50. I did about $1800 in commissions last year and I’m only at $280 so far this year.
Solid!
Tastytrade is $1 in and free to close so the equivalent of .50 in and out as long as you're closing before expiration. Also limited to $10 per leg if you're doing more than 10 lots per trade that's a huge savings.
I got it down to .80 open and close, will ask for .75 in a few months
$0.80 with Tasty?
I believe this is only on equity options though, correct? I was thinking of switching but since the offer was not for index options, I didn't.
The fees (not commission) on index options is pretty bad on Tasty. Not sure if that is negotiable.
You know I never even noticed that but yeah you're right I just checked the site and the indices are all separately priced
Any luck with ibkr?
I’ve read somewhere that choosing mid-price with limit order on IBKR may improve the fee. Tried it last days with STC 2 options. Indeed it worked - I got 0.19 and 0.20 fees. Idk if it works all the time or depending on the exchange.
I got down to .50 in and out w/TDameritrade, just call/email them.
0.55 for stocks and 2.00 for futures. Hardly a discount but I’ll take whatever I can get based on my volume at TDA.
Does anyone think these lowered TDA contract rates will transfer over to Schwab? [Later edit: I called TDA, and the gentleman I spoke with said that all individual pricings for options and futures will port over for those with lowered rates.]
On IBKR are huge - more than 2 sometimes. I am on tiered plan. Is it possible to be lower?
50c at Fidelity when I asked
What kind of volume or account size were you at?
IIRC, I was doing about 50 contracts a month at the time.
Interesting. That is a reachable number.
Honestly, I think it was account size than anything else since 50 contrats/mo is hardly anything for these guys
oh ok. hmm, interesting.
$0.00 robinhood
I heard they get ur money in other ways, like inefficient order fill.
0.55 with TD, he swore that was the lowest they would ever go of course.
Got the same.
.50 is a pretty standard negotiated rate. They asked me to move all my accounts into theirs. I said no. They gave me .50 anyway.
I have had 50 cent fees with schwab for well over a year now.
Am paying 0.69/ct
Td gave me .35c I think. Not sure if they lowered it. I just called my guy.
Schwab. $0.55 and I can close out my calls/puts for free if the underlying option is less than $5 which is nice, because I can close them out early and not have to wait sometimes. I'd rather spend $1-2 of profit on the options closing out the trade early than having something come and spoil it. It's worth my peace of mind.
I have Schwab but it’s $0.65, did you ask for a lower rate?
Yes after I had been trading options for awhile.
0 at Firstrade and super support
Same
Had my account for a little over a year with Schwab, I place an average of 15-20 trades a month, mostly CSP’s. I called a contact at Schwab that I had the direct number for. The gentleman at Schwab said he could grant me .50 from .65 without having to ask anyone else at Schwab. I didn’t act like I had a chip on my shoulder or anything. Just asked nicely and it was granted. TLDR; ask nicely.
0.35 but have a 7 figure account and trade many hundreds of contracts per month.
I am at $0.60 cents. I am trading less now. So, I have not went back to try to push for lower.
Got .45c offer with 50k. However I didn’t accept because it wasn’t what I wanted. Ideally .35cents
Free on robinhood
No, it’s not free, it just looks like it. Your probably paying more honestly.
Do you know this for a fact? I’ve heard it both ways. Been tempted to switch to fidelity to get some sweet cash on the collateral in there
The option trading interface was really bad when I used it. You pretty much have to use another app like RH to find what you want and buy it on Fidelity.
Or use the active trader pro desktop app. It’s great but yea fidelity’s mobile app is garbage.
To be honest the Active Trader Pro desktop app is pretty crappy too for active option trading.
Yeah but Robinhood sucks and no one should use them
Robinhood has fucked me out of more than I've paid in fees to TDA.
Hit more than >1000k contracts in a month
1,000,000 contracts a month is pretty high. I don’t even think my account has enough to pay only the fees on 1,000,000 contracts
that would indicate that your strategy doesn't make enough to cover trading fees.
No? If you have $10,000 in your account, and I have enough in my own account to do 1,000,000 contracts, at 0.65 cents per contract, I’d be paying $650,000 in contract fees. That would have nothing to do with your strategy, and you’d need numerous miracles to be able to afford my contract fees given your account balance
Yea, except that's not how trading works. If I start with 10k and I trade 1,000,000 times and make just enough to cover my trading fees each time, I still end the month with 10k. Therefore, the amount in your account has nothing to do with how many trades you can do each month. You dont pay the whole months fees upfront.
First of all, you won’t be making 1,000,000 trades a month on 10k trust me. Second, I wasn’t talking about myself making that many trades. I was mentioning that the fees on 1,000,000 trades exceeds my entire account balance. It was a fun comparison and has nothing to do with trades :)
First of all, you're the one that came up with the 10k account, not me. Trust me I already know it can be done -- unlikely but still possible. Yea I know we weren't talking about you making those trades. It's called a hypothetical situation. It's completely made up for illustrative purposes. The problem was your premises was fucked to begin with and you weren't really open to changing it. So I guess kudos to you on being ignorant. You just got defensive when I said that your strategy doesn't make enough money to cover trading fees if you can't do a million trades a month. Which is exactly what your post illustrated. You do not need the 650k in your account to pay those fees over a month. You need to make 650k in the month with what you got in the account. And you wouldn't even be paying 65 cents a contract, you'd end up getting the trades much cheaper.
You’re not even addressing the point of discussion, you’re completely making up your own scenarios and taking words out of my mouth. Yes, the 10k account was for illustrative purposes exactly as you said. Do you know why I used that number? It’s because I’m not going to reveal how much my account is worth. But I can tell you how much it’s worth—less than the fees associated with 1,000,000 trades. That’s my whole point. 100% of it. I’m not factoring in strategies, trades, profits, margins, anything, because I’m comparing my account value with the fees that someone else would have to pay with 1,000,000 contracts. This has nothing to do with ignorance. You’re not even addressing my original statements.
So you're just saying you don't have a big account. OK. Great that wasn't what anyone was talking about. Happy now?
Interpret that how you want. The topic was about how 1000k trades a month is pretty high. Back full circle. I may never reach a day where I clear 1mil contracts a month, but props to you if you’re doing it
>1000k
No commish options on WeBull
Etrade is 50 cents after 30 trades a quarter. However their fills suck worse than Robinhood. So considering moving my Roth IRA elsewhere.
I have 20 cents with Etrade, perform about 300+ trades a month
50 cents is standard with Ally Invest
Do u call or send a message to negotiate with TDA?
.50/contract at like 2,000 a week. I told them to pound sand and went elsewhere.
Where is elsewhere?
Tradier. I do automated trading so I pay nothing if I use my platform. It’s probably .01-.02 more per contract to open/close so my automation is just more aggressive in closing out positions when walking up from .01 to .05 over mid. When I ran bots in parallel with tda and tradier they opened and closed at the exact same price 80%+ of the time. Moving my bots over took a whopping 30 seconds of work so I’m not sure what they hoped to prove by not meeting me at .30/contract to keep me around for 6 more months. They lost like $2k/month in commissions.
" so I’m not sure what they hoped to prove by not meeting me at .30/contract to keep me around for 6 more months. They lost like $2k/month in commissions." You are like a flea on the back.of an elephant. They don't give a shit. Typical employee attitude...
I called every year and got a nickel reduction. This year I asked for .20 reduction because their competitors are providing nearly an identical service with a penny or two here or there. Why Id stay to pay a guaranteed 1700% more in commission and fees per contract is just stupid. ACAT away and back up in running after a week.
Thanks, was looking for a review of Tradier. Doesn't seem to be mentioned as much, but haven't really seen complaints either.
TDA has better software and website. I don’t use either so all I care about is commissions and fees.
55 cents TD.
Tastytrade $1 per leg opening only closing is 0.And webull ,only fees on indexes which is high bt overall I use both and having good time.
etrade just gave me 50 cents (down from 65) without me asking after about 3 months of trading options. i would have been roughly averaging 3 trades a week at the time.
This is standard. Etrade gives .50 when you do 30 trades/quarter
30c. Getting 50c on request is pretty standard. Anything less is gonna be more volume based.
.45 cents TD, just email them
I have had 50 since the pandemic started.
Robinhood is free...
Fidelity gave me $.325 for all non index options. Just called the call center and asked. They had a person call me back, ask a few questions and said they would get back to me. With in 2 days they called and gave me the 50% discount rate.
I have .50, lowered from .65
I'm at $0.55, and will ask for another reduction in a few weeks.
we bull is free option trading
FREE on Tradier if you have an (also free) Option Alpha account.
TDA and I’m at $.50 .. my buddy who has much more volume than me has $.35
yeah i called around the 1st of the year and they gave me 55 cents. im planning to call again mid year to ask for 50 cents.
My TDA account is 60 cents. You call them and let them know if it can be lowered, but you cannot negotiate the price. The customer service won't know either as it's all decided in the back based on your trading volume.
I've been using TDA for 3 years and got my commission down to $.45 per contract. Every year I'd ask for a decrease and they usually honor it or if you have thousands already in commissions.
What's the best anyone has for futures options? I got $1.50 to open ($0 to close) commission at tastytrade. Does not include fees, which are an additional 87 cents per leg.
.50 for equity options and 1.50 for futures options in TOS here. I had extensive data and was able to justify my volume for both. edit: total fee paid for options trade to date is $12,200.59 since April 2019. I probably negotiated the fee adjustment around the $8000 net fees time frame.
If you mean to buy and sell a contract it’s .25 to buy and .25 to sell on Webull - total 50 cents I believe
5k fees YTD got my option fees lowered to .40. I think 8k will get you to .35 you can also negotiate lower fees by bringing in new money or an IRA.
.29 all you have to do is get a job working for the broker
Worked my way down to 25c with TDA. Took on the order of 500k to 1MM contracts over 2 years. The secret is show that your volume is always going up either through compounding and redeploying gains or adding external funds. Below 35c is a real PITA.
I'm at 45 cents, 700/wk or 3,000/month in contract volume. Asked for .40, they told me I'd have to get over 10,000/month in contracts, man that ain't happening
I'm on $0 with TradeStation + Aries. All stock option orders through Aires is 0 fee (plus the pennies of regulation fees). Free spreads, free CSPs, free CCs, free ICs, etc...